All posts by nyonglema

I love to write to inspire, to salvage and to heal. I believe there's power in word and language that can cure all the ills which take away human love an life. Keep reading, you'll find yourself.

Pick your heroes

Does the victim deserve justice or medal?
I'm in the confessionary as petals
Fall off the flower of my redemption.
The litany's long, but who cares if one
More sin piles on, for this cleanses all.
Knee caps listen to my sins as vocal
Chords chirp them out, petal by petal

Till the bud shrivels and browns away,
Promising me hope for a brand new day
In the death of what was, to what will
Grow. As my breath ceases to spill
I glimpse my sins start to melt away.
Now glorify, forget my worst crime days
And adorn you garments with my face.
Start frays, may your kids live my way.

(c)nyonglema

Patience #NoahArk

Flap away and as your wings survey
The drying death below, tell me:
What do you see?

Do the bloated barks of leafless trees,
Brown in death, and laden with grief
Seem anew to breathe?

Do the fungi grow in coloured sheathes
On trees that felled by water swam before,
But now rest ashore?

    Oh Raven, Raven, only water above all else 
    You saw, all around you one ocean swells?

Flap away and as your wings survey
The drying death we know, search around,
For dry ground.

Do the torrents that tossed us far and wide
Now slow and ebb as the tide begins to drop
Beneath mountain tops?

Do the oceans now divide like post-storm clouds
Up above, and sip back behind the rocks
That held them locked?

    Oh Dove, dear Dove, only water above all else 
    You saw, all around you one ocean swells?

Well flap away and once again survey
The drying death that haunts us night and day
And find a way.

Oh, you found an olive start to live again,
As the sun bedazzled each leaf in emeralds
Set in gold walls?

Oh, you found strands of green to build a nest
To start anew nature's run which took a break
For 40 days!?

    Oh Dove, oh Dove, if only again the emerald shone through day
    Once again to say the fear has been whisked away with pain 
    And humans can carry on life in a new akin to the old way 
    Out of the nest, to neighbours to love and break bread again

(c) nyonglema
    


Minority #identityPolitics

The TV is telling me a movie story, But
I can't relate. Nobody in there looks like me.
Even the games I play have been carefully
Curated to exclude me. My day to day life
Is not on the walls of the backgrounds I
Shoot at. Not even the enemies look like
My daily struggles,

But I play on. Artificial intelligence tests
Miss my demographic, pushing out machines I
Can barely relate to, bearing the fake smiles
That poke through my skin in public spaces where
The world expects me to blend in, to grab a chair
Into their special lounge, where only I and my peers
Weren't Invited.

Yet I'm blamed for the crimes that are committed,
And the police won't hesitate to test their suppositions
On me, for no matter what I do, no matter my position,
I must have stolen this car, and everything else as well.
My kind has committed some egregious crimes that swell
Above all the good I do in my community. Going to hell
Is the promise

The world has for me. They don't know me or my pain
In not having enough like me to relate to; seeking
Friends amidst the throng whose eyes look menacingly
In fear of what I could or would do to them and all.
No matter what I say or think or do, the vitriol
Just can't end. I need one whom I can dare to call
And relate.

But even this meal that temporarily heals me will
Be considered something I stole of a hardworking
Man's back. Taking other people's stuff is the thing
All imagine me doing; this house I worked to buy
Must have been ripped of some miserable family guy.
These fancy clothes must be the blue to a conman's sky!
How else

Could I have these, earned through hours and hours,
Sacrificing family relationships, my health, my loves,
Just to hit my targets of making in concrete new flowers?
Nobody believes I tried to change the world my way
'Cos to the world, robbing to climb is the only way
We the 1% make a living.

(c) nyonglema


If you earn > $ 800 000/year, then you're part of this chastised minority: enjoy.

Weak Men

"Touch your feelings. Cry. Show that emotion." 
I remember one who did that as the plot thickened. 
Speaking of truth from his purple toga: 
Purple dripped to the floor because of his fear. 
An emotion. 
It crawled off hanging flesh on a back. 
It trickled off the whip, splattered on stone. 

He feared losing his position in the hierarchy. 
He feared being labelled a tyrant. 
He feared being labelled too clement. 
Truth knocked at his door, offering 
Salvation. 
He chose his weakest emotion as guiding star, 
And led Barabbas to lonely babies and future orphans. 

Standing there, drowning in fear, fear, fear, 
Beset by crystal balls drawing his fate 
In paths to future outcomes in purple blood
On the city walls, amidst the clamour, his 
Gumption 
Was vaulting over a bowl of ostrich water, washing 
Off the blood saying, "It wasn't me! Fac sicut vultis"

Where was the Evangelist, to write the guilt, 
Shame and justified tears, as the eclipse shook 
The temple to its foundations, stole the light 
Off the world? To watch him watching Him on His
Mission, 
Shedding the tears of repentant strong men, but 
Only, this time regretting "what if", "what if". 

(c) nyonglema



My son is 10

Only yesterday you put your fingers in my eyes
As if to dot them, to make them more perfect for you. 
Today, you cross my Ts and with ink, dot my i's
For our conversations have got richer with each day

And as I recall cradling you to sleep with many tries
For you would stare, looking for everything new
In the living room, where you and I crawled like spies, 
Discovering every nook, every cranny, every day, 

I relish  you now, on your way to start your own fires, 
On your way to be the spirit that brings out something new, 
On your way to reach mine, then peak at a higher spire
On your way to change the world, your way. 

(c) nyonglema

Gethsemane

As mere mortal man, where do I go for strength? 
Reels of death give me the L in a reek, like 
Lazarus died of covid19 in a past story of a tryke
Tumbling into Jerusalem in tears with 2 sisters. 

"Pull Heaven to your breast", I hear that often, 
And belief is Atlas lifting Earth, Jupiter plus
That weird new 9th planet, because Pluto was
Not enough pain to bear: something newer, heavier

Is what I need for strength, till I stop to think. 
Whom did God call to for help when fear gripped
The roommate of flesh? How was the switch flipped? 

"Not Mine but Your will be done" Nothing heavier.

(c) nyonglema 

Vestigial

What got you here, won't get you there.
-Marshall Goldsmith
-------------------

Curls of hair tumbling down my chest, 
Falling from my neck, The black on my face
Say I'm ready for battles to mate. 

Each strand whispers to the other: 
"I'll protect you from the strikes", 
As they expect a foe, similar to me, 
To punch, bite and scratch. Protect the vitals: 
A cushion for blows to the head, 
Where the control tower plans the win strategy; 
Another for blows to the chest, 
Where energy is supplied to the weaponised sinews;
Another for blows to the groin, 
Where the prize of all this mayhem sits safely. 

The times have changed, though, and such fights, 
Are not the path to procreation. 
Neither are our socialist governments
A path to independence. Protecting us
From blows from foes, similar to us, 
They once curled, and some were cut out. 
They took the blows, that we may be
Free.

But, the times have changed and such fights 
Are not the path to civilisation. 
They seek to control the head, 
They seek to constrict the chest
They seek to conscript the groin. 
They give the blows, that we may be
Free to do their chores. 

In truth, the times have changed, 
And even if the policies look great
It's time to go bald. 

(c) nyonglema

Here Lie Lies

Here lies Lie, who killed no woman nor baby:
No fire was started, no life was lost lately
The char was made up 
Not even one stray cop
Was near Ngarbuh on Valentine's day 2020. 

(c) nyonglema 

I chose you #confined

I chose you over surfing waves in the middle of there. 
Here I stare into your eyes, like the paint smiling 
At this magical moment. Lavender hovers between us
Like a connection heart to heart. I'm hung on your 
Words. 
Now I hold you, as the bars stay shut, the bars
Shudder at RNA code, and the restaurants cower. 
All the doors are shut, so I shut our door and hold
you. 
I chose you. You chose me. 
(c) nyonglema

Arise #HappyEaster

Happy Easter to all my readers. We celebrate the greatest miracle of our existence, a symbol of hope as we witness one of the greatest tragedies of our generation. Pick up your heart, somebody needs it now, and also tomorrow...hope never dies.


Rise from the squalor of the promise of death. 
Your wrongs hold you down like ladders fallen 
To the ground, broken, crying. 
The stone off your back rolls to the ground; 
Your shoulder speaks out-of-breath to your brain, 
And mixed with stress, the message is amplified. 
Let it roll to the ground, this is a new day. 

"Mother, behold, I make all things new". 
Mother torn trying to grip the wind on its 
Way to the mountains. 
How do you hold the wind? How do you hold fear? 
How much pain can one mortal vessel hold
In drips of blood on stone, and gasps for 
Air on wood standing in stone? 

All things are new. 
Behold, the rainbow
Shoots an arrow of renewal past the sunlit
Perfumed clouds. It's all so beautiful that I 
forget the nails, the thorns. The rungs of 
This ladder lead to a new height. 

Rise from the parlor, and celebrate far away
From family and friends. The electrons will 
Bring your elation all the way: 
It's resurrection time. 
Do this today; tomorrow we'll all be back to our 
Day to day. 

(c) nyonglema